Imagine the U.S. as a cultural hegemony in which nobody survives beyond adolescence and where religion and social Darwinism dictate public policy. In The Country of Ice Cream Star, Sandra Newman has created such a world, painting a bold, linguistically adventurous dystopia of a black, Christian America.

At the center of the novel is Ice Cream Fifteen Star, a 15-year-old girl who lives in the Massa woods of the Nighted States and travels with a nomadic, scavenging tribe of children known as the Sengles. They are ruled by Driver Eighteen Star, Ice Cream's older brother. During a scavenging trip in an abandoned "Sleeper" town, they encounter and capture a Russian soldier named Pasha Roo, the first white man they have ever encountered. Driver develops signs of the plague-like infection called the "Posies," the same epidemic that has obliterated the white race and kills others before they reach the age of 20. Ice Cream realizes that the 30-something Pasha has survived beyond adolescence and entertains hopes of finding a cure. With Pasha's cooperation, Ice Cream fights to protect her people and the neighboring bands against the raping and pillaging Nat Mass Armies. She also wrestles with her role as the redeemer "Maria" in Marias City (the former New York City) after being kidnapped and forced into the part by a rival group bent on using their vision of Catholicism for political gain. Ultimately, Ice Cream must find a way to unite the disparate factions while negotiating the struggles of her own love life to survive against the encroaching Russian Federation.

The Country of Ice Cream Star is a singular work of storytelling that manages to be historically and politically compelling in its view of a future haunted by disease and death. Yet Newman manages to imbue her heroine with a hope and resiliency that will surpass the ravages of a woebegone time. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Discover: A dystopian odyssey of a young girl coming of age in the tradition of Riddley Walker and A Clockwork Orange.

Family life never grows old in the hands of Anne Tyler, a master of domestic fiction who returns to familiar terrain in her 20th novel, A Spool of Blue Thread. This time around, Tyler (The Beginner's Goodbye) focuses on the Whitshank family of Baltimore, Md., launching the story with a call from wayward son Denny, who, at age 19, drops an attention-getting announcement on his parents, Abby and Red. He then hangs up and disappears from their lives--and the lives of his three siblings--for years.

Tyler characterizes the Whitshanks as "one of those enviable families that radiate clannishness and togetherness and just... specialness," and Denny "trailed around their edges like some sort of charity case." Years later, when the entire family--including Denny--finally reunites in Baltimore, stories of the past are retold when Abby and Red's future living arrangements are called into question.

The common thread binding the generational tapestry of the Whitshanks is the family home built by Red's father in the 1930s; the warm, inviting nature of the house comes to represent the family. In flashbacks, Tyler delves into the history of Red's parents and how Abby and Red met and married in 1950s. The stories of those who inhabited the residence deepen the meaning of the present-day predicament: with Abby and Red growing older and more infirm, the four disparate siblings and their spouses urge the couple to give up their bedrock, their beloved home, and make alternate living arrangements.

Abby and Red's decision will not only affect their lives, but the lives of their children--particularly the two sons who struggle to reconcile their distinct places in the fold. Tension builds as Tyler stitches together an intricate, insightful story about family history, memories, rivalries and long-held secrets. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Discover: A multi-generational saga about a tight-knit Baltimore family faced with the prospect of selling and dismantling a beloved house.

Centered in Wellington, New Zealand, and the surrounding countryside, Peter Walker's Some Here Among Us is a quiet contemplation on the friendships between diverse characters who come of age during the late 1960s. Race, Candy, Chadwick, FitzGerald and Morgan (the only Maori in the group) protest the Vietnam War, smoke pot and experiment with sex as their friendships coalesce.

When Morgan, the group's true intellectual, dies in a mysterious manner, the rest are affected in ways that become clear only as they continue to grow older and move through the 20th century without him. Employing the viewpoints of all the characters, including Morgan, Walker subtly intertwines historic moments with the experiences of ordinary people who face the normal highs and lows associated with life: passionate love affairs that fail, marriage, the birth of children, advancing age and the aches, pains and dementia associated with it.

Walker's novel is not full of fast-paced action or suspense, but it demands attention as the lives of the characters unfold, revealing hidden thoughts, desires, disappointments and feelings each person has about the other protagonists. It's also an intimate look into the race and class differences in modern New Zealand. Some Here Among Us is Walker's U.S. fiction debut and provides a welcome addition to the arena of good literary fiction by writers from outside the U.S. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Discover: A minimalist look at friendships that paints a vivid picture of the bonds forged early in life.

In 1948, during the Communist insurrection in Greece, a U.S. journalist is found murdered. To keep foreign aid flowing, the right-wing government prosecutes an innocent Greek. In 2011, at the height of the economic and political crisis brought on by austerity measures, a highly intelligent, disaffected student attempts to make sense of the incident. Inspired by the still-unsolved murder of American journalist George Polk and the recent financial crisis, The Scapegoat explores these two tense and troubled times.

In this first English translation of her work, Sophia Nikolaidou creates a compelling cast of characters. Manolis Gris is the eponymous scapegoat, who scrambled to provide for his siblings and mother after the death of his father and is railroaded for the alleged benefit of Greek society, and Minas Georgiou is the student frustrated with the high-stakes Panhellenic exams that will determine his future in a time when there may not be a future worth striving for. Nikolaidou's strong secondary characters include Soukiouroglou, an instructor who failed to obtain a university appointment and now serves as an enlightened despot in the classroom; Evthalia, a retired philologist who carries with her the weight of Ancient Greece; and the chilling Tzitzilis, the head of the Salonica Security Police. Tzitzilis could have haunted a Graham Greene thriller; he is willing to do the dirty work he deems necessary to preserve his community, including torturing the families of suspected communists.

The varied perspectives of these characters create a snapshot of lives in turmoil in a place of deep history and even deeper conflict. --Evan M. Anderson, collection development librarian, kirkendall Public Library, Ankeny, Iowa

Discover: A character-rich exploration of two major social crises in modern Greek history.

Filmmaker, producer, director and pop-music wizard Nelson George has worked with Spike Lee, Chris Rock and Queen Latifah. As a journalist he has written for Billboard, the Village Voice and many blogs. His acclaimed nonfiction books include profiles of Michael Jackson and Motown Records. His fiction, however, is less well known. After his inaugural 2003 novel, Night Work, about a black pop star called Night, George launched a New York City noir series featuring D Hunter, Brooklyn bodyguard to rapper VIPs. The first two, Accidental Hunter and The Plot Against Hip Hop, swing to the sounds of urban patois against a background of George's extensive knowledge of the players, songs and labels of the "post-soul" era.

In his third D Hunter novel, The Lost Treasures of R&B, George shifts focus to the history of R&B. Hunter is hired to find a rumored rare vinyl recording supposedly taped when rival Stax and Motown hitmakers Otis Redding and Diana Ross scatted together in the Detroit Fox Theater. Living with HIV and without family after his brothers' murders, D is further down on his luck because his Manhattan security company went bust. In desperate pursuit of his finder's fee, he stumbles on a gun sale gone bad, a corrupt Brooklyn cop and a white realtor bent on gentrifying Hunter's old 'hood. If the plot is pretty much typical noir double-crossing and misdirection, the wonderful sing-song street slang dialogue and esoteric industry knowledge make The Lost Treasures of R&B a richly entertaining addition to George's evolving series. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Discover: The third in a Brooklyn noir series by the prolific black-culture musicologist Nelson George.

Tom Cooper's The Marauders is a wild pirogue ride through the post-Katrina, post-oil spill bayous of Barataria, outside New Orleans. His characters are the soul of this first novel, a sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking "swamp noir" gumbo with echoes of John Kennedy Toole, Larry Brown and Daniel Woodrell.

The nets of small town Jeanette, La., shrimpers yield nothing but a meager stunted catch that restaurants don't want out of fear of toxic pollution. Cooper captures all the earthy smells and feral sub-strata of the bayou--the "quagmires of mud, impassable brambles, murky lagoons... the jungly bracken, the susurrus of swamp life... the alligators rumored to be a hundred years old and big as sedans." But as Cooper's colorful swamp dopers, shrimpers, drifters and scavengers chase their own treasures and quick scores, 18-year-old Wes Trench slowly moves toward reconciliation with his demanding father and a recognition of the small pleasures in a hardscrabble life. Accepting his legacy, he painstakingly builds his own steel and cypress shrimp boat.

Crazy as his neighbors might be, harsh as his father might seem, unforgiving as the bayous are, Wes finds that Barataria is the home where "he felt the tug of the future... the gravity of the past." When he finally launches the Cajun Gem, he thinks of his dead mother and hopes for her approval: "knowing himself and knowing his father... she probably would have considered it enough." Cooper's The Marauders is as grounded in the simple truth as it is awash in the outlandishly eccentric. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Discover: A funny, sympathetic story of colorful bayou shrimpers and miscreants imperiled by storms, oil spills and their own stubborn follies.

A stolen BMW blazes past two Swedish policemen grabbing a bite to eat and sets in motion a bizarre chain of events. As the officers take off in pursuit of the car, they see it slam into a pedestrian without stopping. The hit-and-run victim is mangled beyond recognition. Then, when the burned-out BMW is later found and officers search the area for the car thieves, they find the body of a young girl in an abandoned cellar. She was clearly malnourished and bears signs of sexual trauma.

Detective Inspector Irene Huss and the rest of the Göteborg police force are overwhelmed by the complicated cases. Who were the car thieves? Who is the victim of the hit-and-run? Who is the dead girl? Are sex traffickers involved? The questions lead Huss all the way to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, and the answers shock her to her very core.

The Beige Man is the seventh entry in the Inspector Huss series, and once again Helene Tursten (The Fire Dance) creates engaging characters, a vivid Swedish setting, an absorbing mystery and a likable protagonist. The rather grim nature of the cases nicely contrasts with Huss's happy home life; her chef husband and twin daughters are friendly and entertaining.

Fans of Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbø are sure to enjoy this novel, and though it's not the first book in the series, readers new to Tursten's work can enjoy it without any difficulty. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Discover: Swedish police officers must simultaneously investigate a murder and a hit-and-run.

Eliot Lazar has fallen in love with an android. His father and younger sister died long ago, his mother moved to a communal island offshore and now his 'droid lover, Iris, has been abducted, dismembered and sold for parts. To get her back, he must find every single piece (arms, legs, fingers, torso, eyeballs...) or she will not be the same after reassembly.

Eliot journeys through a dystopian future Los Angeles, an Orpheus in search of his Eurydice. Iris was a free-roaming android who chose to become a toymaker. She expressed her imperfections when making toys, which eventually got her fired and desperate for electrical power to stay alive--a perfect mark for exploitation by 'bot hunters.

Her boyfriend must travel to brothels, android cities and even into the den of the famed android revolutionary, Lorca. His initial steps bring him into contact with DJ Pink, a sociopathic celebrity who films his grisly dismemberment of androids. Eliot stops the brutal death of another young android woman while looking for Iris's parts and ends up killing Pink, a crime that puts Eliot in the sights of an old-school detective who's not long for the world but still believes in justice.

Judd Trichter's debut, Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, is about love, certainly, but it also addresses humanity's propensity for selfishness and prejudice, traits it has passed along to its mechanical children. This lyrical, musing novel is an engaging blend of romance, suspense, science fiction, action and the meaning of life. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

Discover: This poetic, thoughtful and engaging sci-fi novel tells of love and obsession with a background of androids and machine uprisings.

Romantic entanglements are Jill Mansell's specialty, and in The Unexpected Consequences of Love, she cleverly knits together several story threads spun from St. Carys, a fictional seaside town in Cornwall, England. She focuses on commercial photographer Sophie Wells, a young woman who plies her craft in earnest in order to put a painful romantic past behind her. When Josh Strachan moves back to town after a stint as a Hollywood talent agent to help his Grandma Dot run Mariscombe House, the family hotel, he is instantly smitten with Sophie, who is doing a photo shoot at the inn. Having sworn off romance, Sophie doesn't look twice at Josh, but this only encourages him to work harder to win her affections--and solve the mystery about her past.

Then Sophie's free-spirited best friend, Tula, loses her job and moves to St. Carys. She is instantly attracted to Josh, but another local, Riley--a ne'er-do-well and flirt--has eyes for Tula. Riley's not sure what it'll take to turn Tula's head, and matters grow even more complicated when Tula lands a job at Mariscombe House.

Mansell (Don't Want to Miss a Thing) has written another lively, engaging romance where an ensemble of characters--including Grandma Dot--have had their hearts wounded by the past and secrets. Each member of the cast is faced with the prospect of loving again—and the conflicts therein. Amid obstacles that challenge happy endings, Mansell introduces poignancy, humor and unexpected grace. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Discover: An entertaining cast of characters struggle to overcome obstacles to romance.

In I Am Not a Slut: Slut-Shaming in the Age of the Internet, Leora Tanenbaum returns to the subject of her 1999 book Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation, updating her research on slut-shaming and name-calling to reflect the changes in the social and digital landscape over the last 16 years. She explores the differences between slut-bashing and slut-shaming, the myriad ways teens and young adults use the Internet and social media to shame young women and the ever-evolving ways that gender norms shape our images of sex, sexuality and sexual assault.

The information that fuels I Am Not a Slut is based as much on the dozens of interviews that Tanenbaum conducted with women and girls across the country--ranging in age and race and sexuality--as it is on quantitative data and scientific studies. The resulting arguments are all the stronger for the anecdotal evidence that accompanies them. In many instances, however, Tanenbaum uses absolutes, making claims about "every woman," "all men" or things that happen "always," which weaken her otherwise thoughtful arguments. She is at her strongest when dealing with double standards of sex and sexuality (how, for example, men are expected to have many sexual partners while women are criticized for exactly the same thing) and how the prevalence of slut-shaming amplifies a culture of victim-blaming. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Discover: A wealth of new research on the culture of slut-shaming in the age of the Internet.

Michael Hall's (Perfect Square) smart, insightful coming-of-age story for youngest readers stars Red, a mislabeled crayon, who discovers his true self.

An unseen narrator wielding a pencil introduces the hero--"He was red"--above a crayon clearly marked "Red" but showing a pointy blue tip under its red wrappings. "But he wasn't very good at it," the pencil continues, as the blue fellow marked "Red" draws a blue fire engine (readers can tell from its ladders and hoses). "Oh dear," remarks Olive, whose wrappings match her name. Red's teacher thinks he "needed more practice," but his strawberries come out blue ("Oh my! Let's try again," says Scarlet). When his grandparents believe he's "not warm enough," Silver hands the hero a red scarf, but his self-portrait still comes out blue. Red's classmates have their theories: Amber says, "Sometimes I wonder if he's really red at all," and Hazelnut answers, "Don't be silly. It says red on his label." Hall's clever use of crayons as metaphors allows children to explore examples of situations where people may have been labeled by categories: by religion, race, culture or gender. The other crayons aren't critical of Red, just close-minded in their tireless efforts to aid in his conformity.

Youngest children will find humor in Red's attempts to match his label (he draws a series of blue hearts, cherries and foxes), and be pleased when he meets "Berry," who asks the hero to make an ocean for his boat, and helps Red discover, "I'm blue!" --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: A fable for modern times, in which a mislabeled crayon discovers his true identity.

A spunky and imaginative heroine takes young readers from winter to fall in Nick Bruel's (Bad Kitty) picture book, with the pacing and energy of a comic book.

A yawning girl dressed in purple opens her front door to a snow-covered wonderland in "Part One: Winter Wear." Her mother advises, "You better wear your boots." Her father suggests earmuffs. Though her parents don't appear again, the remaining characters who suggest additional winter wear do: a dog ("You'd better wear your snowpants"), a cat, Louise the purple hippo, a tree and refrigerator. "Now go outside and have fun!" they all shout from the doorway. By the time she's fully attired, the snow has melted and the trees are in full leaf. In "Spring Splendor," the girl sings the season's praises, dressed in a tutu and wielding a magic wand. She and her dog make "a happy duo,/ A jolly pair are we!" But their high-octane chanting and pretending (portrayed in a series of vertical panels) brings out the Bad Kitty in the family cat, attempting to nap under a tree. One of the most original comics panel sequences involves the heroine melting in "Summer Sidewalks." Louise the purple hippo figures out how to save her (hint: it involves the freezer).

The finale, "Fall Foliage," steers toward metafiction, as the girl reads this very book to the tree (introduced in the opening). Its leaves turn brown, then fall like chocolate flakes in Bruel's collage illustrations. A celebration for all seasons. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: A spunky heroine moves from winter to fall, in a tale with the pacing and energy of a comic book.